About this blog

My name is Bill Hirt and I'm a candidate to be a Representative from the 48th district in the Washington State legislature. My candidacy stems from concern the legislature is not properly overseeing the WSDOT and Sound Transit East Link light rail program. I believe East Link will be a disaster for the entire eastside. ST will spend 5-6 billion on a transportation project that will increase, not decrease cross-lake congestion, violates federal environmental laws, devastates a beautiful part of residential Bellevue, creates havoc in Bellevue's central business district, and does absolutely nothing to alleviate congestion on 1-90 and 405. The only winners with East Link are the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington and their labor unions.

This blog is an attempt to get more public awareness of these concerns. Many of the articles are from 3 years of failed efforts to persuade the Bellevue City Council, King County Council, east side legislators, media, and other organizations to stop this debacle. I have no illusions about being elected. My hope is voters from throughout the east side will read of my candidacy and visit this Web site. If they don't find them persuasive I know at least I tried.

Friday, August 8, 2014

East Link's Monumental Stupidity

The two previous
posts dealt with the devastating effect of East Link’s lack of capacity on I-90
Bridge commuters.This post explains why East Link would be a monumentally stupid idea even if it had the
needed capacity.

The Sound Transit
2008 DEIS promoted East Link as the way to increase I-90 Bridge transit
capacity by 60%.They later
“refined” light rail capability by projecting 50,000 daily riders with 40,000
coming from terminating existing I-90 bus routes at the South Bellevue and
Mercer Island light rail stations.

The ST East Link
plan raises the question,“Why not
terminate it at the South Bellevue P&R?”Doing so would provide 40,000 of the projected 50,000 riders
with transit access and eliminate the cost and devastation to those living
along the route into Bellevue.(A
South-Lake-Union-style streetcar system with connections to the Bellevue T/C would be a far better way to attract development to BelRed.)

East Link’s proposed
operating schedules provide 484 car trips per day, so shortening the route
would reduce car miles per day by 10,600. At $22.48 cost per car mile (per 2014 ST budget) nearly
$240,000 per day would be saved in operating costs, or $24.00 for each of the
10,000 lost riders.Presumably some
of the 10,000 would find other ways to get to the South Bellevue station
reducing the number of riders lost from the truncation.

Truncating East
Link by 11 miles at the Bellevue station would reduce the route to
Lynnwood and back from 77.6 miles to 55.6 miles.The daily operating costs for the 484 car trips would still be $605,000.The Seattle-to-Lynnwood portion will
not provide any additional net fare box revenue since Central Link will have
far more capacity than needed without East Link.Thus the light rail operating cost for each of the 40,000 bus riders with the truncated route would still be ~$15.00.

All of the
transferred bus riders would presumably have paid the $2.50 fare when they
entered the bus so ST would have to subsidize the entire $605,000 daily operating
cost.Assuming
the weekend daily cost would be half that level requires ST to provide $3.6 Million
weekly or ~ $187 Million yearly to cover operating costs. Each weekday rider forced to switch to light rail rather than continue riding the bus the 9 miles into Seattle from Bellevue or the 6 miles from Mercer Island will require a subsidy of up to $7800 annually.

Again, this assumes
East Link had the capacity to accommodate the 20,000 riders morning and
afternoon commutes.Many of
these commuters will be forced to find other ways into Seattle because of lack
of capacity during peak commute.Thus, the subsidy for actual “riders” will be substantially higher.

ST is currently
planning to spend ~ $3 billion in capital costs to initiate this East Link
operation.If doing so doesn’t qualify
as a "monumentally stupid" idea, I don’t know what does.

The fact it will
also gridlock vehicle traffic on the I-90 Bridge and turn what was an easy bus
commute to Seattle into a transit nightmare for others simply adds to the stupidity.

About Me

My last elective position was class president for 25 “class of ’57” seniors in Armstrong, Iowa. I received an MS in engineering at ISU, worked at Boeing for 36 years before retiring in 1998. My wife and I moved into our current home in Bellevue in 1967 where we raised two daughters. Three years of unsuccessful attempts to persuade BCC to block EL are available on “extended session” meeting minutes. Copies of many were sent to all the media outlets, legislators, and others to no avail. I’m hoping this Web site will convince east side residents to query their own legislators.